


Where Iron Blooms

by SilasMarinara



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Alpha Males, Coming of Age, Epic Battles, Origins, Other, Retelling, Running Away, Tags May Change, War, tags to be added as work progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 12:45:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22804636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilasMarinara/pseuds/SilasMarinara
Summary: You've heard other versions of this story.You've never heard the real one, though....I promise.Give it a try.It's Hades and Persephone, so you know you want to....
Relationships: Original Character/Original Character





	1. The Bartender

**Author's Note:**

> This work is also posted on wattpad - https://www.wattpad.com/story/214430691-where-iron-blooms

I collapsed onto the bar’s only open stool with an involuntary sigh.

Some days, the melodramatic was the only option.

The rain pattered outside on the sidewalk, the streetlights shining hazy in the gloom. It hadn’t looked like the windows were that heavily tinted from out there, but looking out now over my left shoulder, the streetlights seemed less than half-bright, barely making a dent in the misty not-quite-downpour. I had passed this place rather more frequently of late, changing up my route home for no real reason, and finally made the impulsive choice to drop in and drown the angst.

No sense labelling it anything else: that’s exactly what it was.

Here I was, 36 years old, and angsty as hell for no good reason.

Or at least, no reason that another adult would consider valid.

It wasn’t like I didn’t have a job; I was just starting to hate it, more and more and –

“Dime for your troubles?”

The bartender leaned on his elbow, the classic cliché of extended lighter and unruly mop of black hair with the white cloth slung over his left shoulder, farthest from me. He smiled faintly at me, his eyes crinkling at the outer corners: black eyes, shards of obsidian, ebony and jet, wide-open and honest as a dawn’s ray….

I swallowed.

_How easily I could drown in those eyes…._

“…. Isn’t the offer usually a penny for your troubles?”

“Or is it thoughts…? No matter; based on that sigh, and your utterly woebegone look, I thought I’d offer a dime-r for your troubles, since you obviously have more than a handful….”

His voice was quiet, a velvet murmur that somehow seemed to carry through the air, even beyond where I sat enraptured at his bar. He’d obviously never smoked a day in his life; his voice would have cradled swans’ down without a scratch.

_How would it feel to hear that voice of a night, in the morning, every moment in between…?_

“You can put the lighter away, I don’t smoke. And I fear I made my so-called _troubles_ out to be more than they truly are. I’ll just take a light white wine, if you have one; just something easy….”

“You got it, but then you’re going to tell me your troubles, even without the dime.”

He pushed up off the counter, moving to the back wall and snagging a glass from the rack after he slipped the lighter into a shallow wicker tray. My eyes were snagged by the view the short distance afforded me of the rest of his frame: narrow shoulders and slender ribcage and lean waist, all encased in an artfully-rumpled jet-dark dress-shirt. His onyx slacks were slung around his hips, low, wrapping the hems of his shirt beneath the narrow band of leather through the loops; the belt snugged everything just tight enough to showcase his ass, perfect curves that offered just enough plush to dream about without seeming too-much for his otherwise thin and leanly-muscled appearance.

Overall, he was perfect in my eyes, and I wondered if it had been some strange hand of fate that led me to turn into this dark little bar with too-dark windows and a somehow elegant clientele. The few patrons I could see weren’t sleazy or booze-hounds; a few seemed to be office-job types, like me, out for a quiet drink in a dark space.

It had not escaped my notice that the place smelled clean; there was none of the dingy booze-and-sweat-and-dusty-mustiness that was the hallmark of so many places that _looked_ like this. There was a tint of cigar-smoke wafting from one of the booths lining the shadowy back wall, but the atmosphere here, though dim, somehow had me thinking of a speakeasy or a turn-of-the-century gentleman’s club….

“Here you go, friend….”

The bartender was back with my wine, and the delightful bouquet drifting up to my nostrils stole my attention entirely.

At least, until his fingers brushed mine as he released the stem of the crystal to my grip.

He smiled sheepishly at my wide-eyed shock and swallow, his eyes crinkling once again, and I took a far too hasty gulp of the elegant wine to cover my ineptitude. He bent slightly as I tried to keep from choking on the sweet-tart taste, snagging a stool hidden under the edge of the counter on his side. He settled onto it, crossing his arms on the glass-topped blackwood; his hands cupped his biceps, and I finally noticed his sleeves were cuffed up to his elbows. His honey-golden skin nearly glowed against the jet-night of his shirt, and I felt my breath leave me entirely in one dreamily-gusting sigh.

_Dammitall, does he have any idea how hot he looks?!_

“So, um, your troubles, then, good sir?”

It took a long, stupidly long, minute for my brain to make the connection to my mouth. “Oh, honestly, it’s nothing. I just…. I’m losing most of my faith in human creativity…. God, that sounds stupid.”

“No, not at all…. You’re an artist? Having trouble finding paid work?”

I met his sincere gaze, the compassion there utterly endearing.

“Not hardly. I’m a copy-editor, and kind of an author’s helper on the side. I just…. Everything I’ve edited in the last year sells, but they’re all so…. Everything is nearly the same plot, the same story, the same old clichés. I’m just…. I’m craving something new, but I find myself consistently disappointed.”

There was a flash in his eyes, and I felt the crawly tingle running up my spine. _Here it comes, the whole “I have something new for you to read, lemme just get my Wattpad dashboard up and running!”_

“What if it was something old, not new, but definitely nothing you’ve seen before…?”

Against my better judgment, my curiosity was piqued. “I highly doubt that; remember, it’s all the same, has been for ages. It’s like there’s no new stories anymore….”

“It’s not a new story. It’s an old one, dreadfully old. But it’s never been told correctly.”

His voice rasped a little then, and I wondered at the emotion surging in his words. He was obviously excited, eager for me to agree, but I wasn’t sure if I could take another disappointment when this story turned out to be like all the rest.

But maybe…. Maybe fate had a hand in this pie, too….

“…. Okay. I’ll give it a look. But I’m not agreeing to represent you or anything until I read the thing through the first time. And this is gonna be a pleasure read, for shits and giggles, alright? It may have to backburner if I get swamped with actual work. We square?”

“Sure! If you come by in another night or two, I’ll have the manuscript ready for you….”

“You could just email it to me.”

“Nah. Paper is better.”

I laughed, louder than I had in weeks, and he smiled with me, broad and bright, his honey-amber skin near shimmering with happiness.

“Geez, man…. How old are you, talkin’ ‘bout paper’s better!?”

“Guess….” He stared into my eyes, his face a mask of silent pondering and anticipation.

_Whoa. That’s intense…. _“Um, well…. 38?”

“Close. 49.”

“Close?!”

“Well, in the grand scheme of things….”

I stared at him, trying to figure out if he was yanking my chain. Carefully taking a sip of the wine, I catalogued those small crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the matching ones beside his nose as he smiled strategically to show them off. _He could be…. But I’d swear he’s younger…._

“Sure. 49. If you say so, Pops….”

He laughed then, and I wondered how I could have thought his voice beautiful before.

An angel, he was, bound in flesh, I was certain of it; there was magic in that voice, and like a child, I fell under the spell.

“Ray, hey, help a girl out!”

“Tharra, hang on, I’m coming!”

I snapped my mind back to reality, reeling from the near-swooning pleasure of his laughter; he dashed along the length of the bar away from me, away from the door, only to careen around the end of the long counter and nearly sprint toward the door again. I spun on my stool, all but losing my balance entirely, to see him taking a few paper bags of groceries from the arms of a raincoat-draped woman. She was a little taller than the bartender, whose name was obviously Ray, and she gave a whooping sigh of relief as she kicked the door closed against the rainy breeze behind her. Ray moved back down the bar, and Tharra stared at me staring at her as she pushed the hood of her raincoat off her head.

“Hi there! I’m Tharra; I see you were distracting my husband….”

_Husband?! Oh hell…. _

“Tharra, love, leave the guy alone; I rescued you, didn’t I?!”

She laughed, windchimes and starshine compared to his angel-bells and velvet, and I spun tightly around once more, hunching over the bar in shame….

_I didn’t even see a ring on his finger! Dammit, Silas, what are you doin’, flirting with a married man?!_

“Sorry, friend, I didn’t mean to break ya! It’s just not often my Ray is caught napping on the job….”

“I wasn’t, love, we were talking about work, and creativity, and life….”

“Ah, the big three….”

I managed to regain barely enough composure to present an innocent expression when Tharra made her way down the back of the bar to take Ray’s stool across from me. Her midnight-blue eyes were striking against her tawny skin, and her raven hair hung in soft-damp curls around her cat-like, sharply-angled face. She flung one elbow to the bar-top, cradling her chin as she gave me a thorough once-over; another tingle feathered along my spine, and my stomach clenched involuntarily with a sudden flash of fear.

_Why do I feel like she’d kill me if I mess up…? That **can’t** be normal…._

“Tharra, did you get vanilla, love?”

“Oh, shoot, no, I’m sorry! I’ll get it tomorrow, promise!”

“S’okay, love; just no cin’mon rolls in the morning, then….”

The stool rocked a little as the woman jumped to her feet, turned to face her husband down the length of the bar where he was unpacking the cold-keeping items into a wide-opened fridge. “Oh, my stars, whatever shall we do without cinn-a-mon rolls?! The horror!”

Soft laughter echoed through the bar; obviously, this was a near-regular occurrence, or something similar was, at any rate. But just like that, the tension broke, the hunted feeling that had stalked me at Tharra’s approach gone as if it had never been.

_Must be the weather, got me all jumpy and shit…._

I sipped on my wine, letting go of the fruitless dreams I’d barely begun to envision. He was taken, and if their relationship was in any way open, he’d have to make that first move to let me know….

An hour later, I left a twenty on the bar with a double-tap of my bent-over forefinger. Ray waved at me from the other end of the bar, where he was chatting with a petite woman in a pixie cut and tank-top and a hulking man who looked like a bodyguard for some hi-level member of the mafia. I ducked back out into the drizzle, the brightness of the streetlights shocking me rather more sober as the door swung shut behind me with a quiet hiss of hinges.

I made my way home with a head full of curiosity and pleasant tingling buzzing, the few blocks passing in a blur and haze.

I hadn’t even caught the name of the bar….

* * *

I made my way back a few nights later, ducking in through the door as a group of business-suited men came out into the near-daylight brightness of the city after dark. I slipped into an empty booth this time, under a yellow-buzzing wall-mounted lamp; I figured on starting to look at Ray’s manuscript while I was here, at least, wind down a bit with sating the curiosity that had been eating me alive since I left this place before.

I unpacked my small legal pad and bright-blue gel pen from my messenger bag, stationing them to my left, closer to the wall and directly under the glow of the lamp. Softly padding feet drew my attention then, and I looked to my right to see Ray sliding into the booth across from me, a brilliant, squinty-eyed smile on his face.

“Hey, you made it back…. Excellent.”

“Yeah, well, you got me interested with your talk of old stories told wrong. I’ve spent the past two nights editing another mosaic full of clichés, so, I’m more than ready for whatever you’ve got….”

“I’m sure it won’t disappoint. What would you like to drink tonight?”

“How’s your scotch?”

“Forgive me the brag, but I think it’s top-notch….”

And just like that, he was gliding away from the booth, nearly dancing and twirling on his toes as he passed Tharra emerging from behind the bar with a tray and rags to clean the table those businessmen had obviously vacated before I arrived. Ray was once more wearing a black dress shirt and slacks, and I tried hard not to ogle; I did try….

Tharra’s snorted chuckle told me I wasn’t succeeding, so I turned back to my bag, pretending to hunt for something to hide the rising blush in my cheeks. Just a few moments later, the other booth’s cushions groaned a little when Ray settled in across from me. I met his eyes; he was still squinting, and I raised one eyebrow at him in silent query.

He shrugged, seeming embarrassed. “My eyes are sensitive, a bit. But I won’t bother you long.” He slid a scotch onto a coaster on my right, and a leather-bound journal into place in front of me, between my splayed hands on the dark-stained wood of the tabletop.

“You weren’t kidding about it being on paper!”

He chuckled with me as I moved to lift the top cover. His fingers seemed to hesitate, lingering on the supple black-toned leather, but he did finally relinquish the thing to my care as he took in a shaky breath. “I promise, it’s worth the time I’ve put in it. Enjoy the night….”

He left the booth, moving to help Tharra finish clearing that glassware strewn table, a soft-loving kiss passing between them before I managed to focus on the pages displayed to my view in the yellow light of the wall-bound lamp.

_Holy shit…. That’s some Edwardian-level handwriting here…. _

I drowned in the elegant shapes of Ray’s calligraphic penmanship for a long, breathless moment. I was insanely jealous for one aching moment of Tharra for snagging him who knew how long ago before I ever even got the chance; but at least I had the privilege of knowing the guy.

Of seeing this work of art, so warily entrusted to my care….

I promised myself I’d give this story every personal and professional effort; Ray would receive nothing less than my honest opinions in exchange for his innocent trust….

I finally moved on from admiring the detailed artistry of the way he’d chosen to present his story, taking in the first words, the working title and the chapter title below that:

_Where Iron Blooms_

_01: Settling in Stone_

_Alright, then, Ray…. Give me your best shot…._

_“The stone was unyielding, but things that do not yield….”_


	2. 01 - Settling in Stone

The stone was unyielding, but things that do not yield are doomed to destruction. What does not bend, breaks. Ever. Always.

He continued to reassure himself of this fundamental attribute of existence as he hacked away at the wall of the cavern, his pickaxe ringing piercing-sharp over and over and over yet-more. The sound was soothingly musical at distance when the echoes rang back like bells, but it struck horribly harsh up close against the black-night stone that he methodically reshaped by the strength of arms and back alone.

Long minutes went by wherein all he felt was the increasing strain of raising the pickaxe high over his shoulders, the sweat that merely dripped and pooled on and around his body, unable to evaporate without the breezes he could hear whistling by outside this cavern’s mouth. The leather band around his brow, holding back his thick locks, began to swell in the humidity trapped in a miasma of oily-saltiness around his head.

Which only exacerbated his building headache.

The pickaxe lodged in a fissure of the wall in front of him, and his hands slipped from the handle, unable to maintain his grip as overwrought muscles gave out. He left the tool lodged in the stone, stumbling toward the cave mouth, his only thought for the pitcher of water he’d left with his heather-grey shawl outside by what he’d come to think of as his resting rock.

The boulder was perfectly sized for the long lines of his lean body, a thin and shallow channel carved by a stream in some long-distant time running down the slopes and planes of the western-most surface, looking out over the valley’s expansiveness below this mountainside shelf. The channel was _exactly_ the right depth, the perfect width, the entire thing exquisite as if it had been designed for his relaxation and pleasure when his flesh cried out for rest.

Which was exactly why he’d moved it from the prior cavern when he finished that excavation and moved to this one. Well worth the fatigue of that afternoon’s efforts, as he had decided last week after his first day at work on _this_ cavern’s expansion. He’d already been making plans for which cave would be next, scouting paths over which he’d need to maneuver his resting rock.

He groaned as he lowered his aching body into the embrace of the stone’s perfectly-designed channel. The slight hump was right under the bend of his knees, and he sighed as he settled into the groove in the stone, unable to slide past that cradling hump, a smooth ridge behind his neck giving him an excuse to let his head roll back with a sigh.

His eyes drifted closed, the vision of the modifications still to be made to the mountain behind and beneath him playing out like an unrolling painted-scroll, ink-marked outlines and notes imprinted across the pale grey backdrop of his lid-lowered sight. He let the images take over his thoughts until his mind felt like nothing more than a silent receptacle, a basin placed carefully beneath the spout of water gushing from a hidden channel in a fern-covered hillside, filling with cool droplets of inspiration and purpose until he could hold no more. The excess drained away peacefully, then, leaving acceptance and calmness of dedication behind.

Until gravel and scree clattered somewhere to his left, southward, down the arcing path he’d trod these last long, back-breaking weeks of effort carving the mountain to fit his demanded purposes.

He jumped up from his reclined rest, his bare feet anchoring him with twisting movements in the gravel as he spun toward the noise. A cloud of dust flew high in a column around a lone figure, and coughing and gasping echoed out over the mountainside as the silhouette bent toward the stony path in shock.

Though it had been long months since he last heard that voice, he recognized it even through the rasping and gagging spawned by the explosion of dust.

“Thessy?”

“…. Don!”

The hand he’d raised, claw-like, before his chest relaxed, flipping to drag through the air with his palm now facing the ground below. The dust descended in time with his motion, and the woman peered at him with watering emerald eyes. Her eyebrows crawled up on her tawny skin, shocked and impressed at his power. Those thin bands of soil-dark hair then lowered, and he knew she was taking stock of his altered appearance.

He stood still, letting her approach over the last few meters of stone separating them in this twilit space. Her loose oak-brown curls lifted slightly in the light and fitful breezes, bound beneath a pine-green ribbon, sweat-stained and soil-smudged. There was more dirt beneath her nails, and her loose peplos was liberally marked with dark-grey river silt and acorn-tan earth. She smoothed one thin-fingered hand over her stomach, the movement seeming rather absent-minded, while her other hand came hesitantly up to cover her mouth.

“Don…. What’s happened to you…?”

He shrugged, refusing to give weight to something unalterable and still-too-raw to his own emotions. “Part of who I am now, can’t help it. But, Thessy, you shouldn’t be here. Truly. Why-”

“Don, please, you have to come back! We’re going to lose, we need you! _Please!_”

She threw herself into his arms, sobbing beyond sense; he caught her reflexively, holding her awkwardly as her knees struggled to support her lurching weight….

* * *

He held her, and she couldn’t help but remember the last man she’d been so vulnerable before. The contrasts could not have been more distinct, however: where _he_ had been warm without and distant within, Don was cool to the touch with his heart reaching in comfort and strength for her own overwrought soul; where _he_ had held her only long and deeply enough to ensure she would be left craving more when he pulled abruptly away, Don would hold her tightly until _she _chose to tell him she was satisfied; she loved _him_, but it was Don she’d come to, without _him_ knowing….

She sniffled, stiffening her spine, telling Don she had given up all the composure she could. His arms relaxed around her, and he turned, sweeping one dust-streaked arm toward the enormous lump of rock he’d been lounging on before she startled him with an ill-timed stumble on the loose gravel of the path. His voice was a melodic murmur, soothing her still without imposing on her silently-stated independent strength.

“I’d offer you _xenia_, dear Thessy, but I fear that would be the opposite of hospitality.” He handed her onto the stony almost-chair before crossing his legs and nearly collapsing to the ground at her feet. His hands deftly snagged the pitcher of water sitting by the rounded base of the boulder, moving it out of her reach with a smirk. The smirk changed nearly instantly to a hungry open-mouthed expression as he brought the pitcher up, tilting it precariously before his lips fully met the rim of the thing. She watched him raptly as he worked to drain the pitcher in one racing stretch, cataloguing his appearance and wondering what this place had done to him.

His black hair was webbed with white, the pale strands laid over the upper layers of his sweat-slicked hair like the legs of a moon-bright spider; the randomness and disconnected placement of the white hairs were alien to her understanding, and she knew she’d be trying to decipher the strangeness for days. His fingers were as long and elegant as she had remembered, a scholar’s fingers; prominent callouses stood out in sharp detail from those slender lines now, though, and she registered with a glance the pickaxes and shovels laid out along the wall of the mountain near the cave-mouth, knowing those were the cause of that destruction to such nobility as his hands had held before.

His eyes, though…. She needed to see his eyes again.

The gaunt lines of his clavicle and shoulders could easily be from the strain of whatever he was doing to this enormous hunk of rock; the strange leanness of his hips and legs could be from interminable days of walking these cursed gravel-strewn cliffside pathways.

But his eyes….

He finally sighed heavily and lowered the pitcher, focusing on her with an effort as the effects of quenching his thirst obviously bordered on pure sensual pleasure for a long moment. His eyes narrowed, and she barely managed to look away as the fear rode high in her breast, shining out of her eyes on the heels of sudden tears.

His eyes were as grey as the clay of the pitcher he was carefully lowering to the stone by his hip, the brilliant blue-ocean color leached away by his remaining in this place, and she wept to see the evidence of how he had changed so much from what she’d known….

_Before…._

* * *

Don gave another soft sigh as he realized Thessy had been worrying and pondering his appearance. He should have known she wouldn’t let it go; he knew she had always admired his eyes, his hair.

It hadn’t changed anything.

She had loved _him_.

Which reminded him….

“Thessy, come now, you know you can’t remain here. Tell me what you mean about ‘losing,’ and then I’ll take you to the pathway back. We don’t have long, not if you’re going to get out of here unmarked.”

_Play on her fear, her wariness of the changes in you; that will ensure she tells all sooner rather than beating around bushes for pigeons…._

She seemed to steel her spine, stiffen her resolve, as she turned back to him. He knew she hadn’t really been contemplating the view of the valley to the west, the pale mirror-sun fading in the distance. She’d only been trying to regain her composure after studying him far-too-long for comfort in this dead land.

Her eyes were as hard as the emeralds they resembled when they locked on his pale-grey ones.

“We _are_ losing, there’s no _meaning_ to it. We are losing; they’ve pushed us back to Orthrys, and…. Him and-”

“Thessy, you can say his name, it’s not like I haven’t heard it before!” He tried for a winning smile, but all he got in return was a grimace that somehow rang of fear under the wry irony.

“Fine. _Zeus_ and the others are all locked down at the base of Orthrys itself; they can’t go up, or down, or around. I was able to get past the lines, and I knew you were our only chance! I had to come here! Please, Don, please, you have to come and bind them now!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hang on. We talked about this, before I left. I told Zeus, Pose, Hestia, all of them. I told them all that the cells needed to be carved out, by hand. I told them I couldn’t use any of my power to get this done, or the magic would leave traces the Titans can use, can twist, and then they’d be loose again. I told him I needed time, to make it safe.” He stared into Thessy’s stony emerald eyes, searching for the answer. “Why didn’t he give me the time…?”

“Aidoneus, it’s been ten years! You’ve had time!” She was angry, and he could only gape like a beached fish for far too long a moment.

“Wait. No. It’s been 8 months, if that! Months, not years, and certainly not ten!”

“Aidoneus, I’m telling you, it’s been ten years! Ten long years, and we’ve been fighting for the most of them, and Kronos. Is. Winning! You have to come up, you have to help us, or we’ll lose everything!”

He lurched onto his feet, unable to stay still though his legs trembled from the unsatisfying short moments of rest on the cold stone. He paced on the promontory, the discrepancy a coal-covered shard of diamond in his mind as he hacked at it with all the logic he had.

“No, I’m certain it’s only been months, but maybe there’s a shift, a disconnect, maybe…. But _they_ would know, why wouldn’t they have told me?! They leave every night, they have to know how much time is passing up there, rather than down here….” He stopped then, knowing that it would do no good to keep chasing that arrow when the remaining flight was turning high above to pummel him into the ground. “Thessy, I have nowhere to put them. I’ve only got six cells right now. One of them might do for Kronos, but the others…? How am I supposed to bind thirteen other Titans in five cells?! Well, four, really, ‘cause this one’s not even a fifth of the way to done!”

“I don’t know, but Aidoneus, we’ll all die if you don’t come up and fight!”

He stared at her, and she at him, and he knew he had no alternative.

But there had to be something, some way to salvage the plan, to keep everything from falling apart once he’d fixed everything for the moment….

“…. Fine. I’ll come up, and I’ll fight. And we will win.” He couldn’t stop it; a rumble of shifting stone echoed over the mountainside as his power thrashed from his body, clamoring, spoiling for release. It had been too long, and he knew he would seem both a wonder and a terror when he stepped upon the battlefields above. “But when we win, when I’ve bound them as best I can, to hold the ones most-dangerous and temporarily capture the others: then, I need your solemn word that all of you will return here, with me, in shifts, to finish these damned cells, so we can _all_ rest and sleep in peace!”

She stood, shifting warily from foot to foot, a rabbit pinned against the cave wall by a fox. “Why my word? What makes you think they’ll obey me?”

“You’re here on Zeus’ orders, are you not?”

She brushed a loose lock of her oaky hair behind her ear, her other hand curling tight over her stomach with nerves. “No. I wasn’t there, I wasn’t at Orthrys when they got trapped, and I made the decision on my own.”

He stared at her, not able to believe what she had said. “You weren’t there…? Thessy, you’ve always said you’d fight at his side until the end! Why weren’t you there?!” There was something missing, here, some piece to the puzzle he couldn’t quite….

His eyes snapped to her hand clenching and unclenching in the fabric over her stomach, and he stumbled backward as horror tore through his chest with claws of dread and ice.

“Thessy…. No…. You’re….”

Tears shone in her eyes, the emeralds winking in the faint-and-fading light as she raised her chin in haughty defiance. “I carry the heir to the King of Olympus inside me. I was not upon the bloody fields so that my King’s progeny remains safe.”

“Safe?! _Safe?!!?_” She flinched as his words roared back from the mountainside, echoed deep within the gaping maw of the cavern behind them. “Thesmophoria, you came to the Kthonic Realms while you’re pregnant! That baby is not safe, not now! It’s marked, you….”

A glitter in her eyes, deep behind the shine of tears. A brittleness in her voice, and he wondered if she was as sane as she appeared. “My King’s Heir is strong enough to withstand a few moments in your realm of death, oh Aidoneus, I assure you….”

He swallowed, softly, uncertain now at the feral feeling from his young companion. Something was still missing, some piece, and he knew he had to dig a little deeper. The damage was already done; the babe marked within its mother’s womb in the instant Thesmophoria crossed the Styx and trod this rocky ground, breathed this dusty air….

“Zeus’ heir…. But he is no King yet…. And I thought he intended Hera for his Queen…?”

She collapsed then, falling back onto his resting rock with a dry sob. He lunged toward her, landing on his knees at her feet, his hands catching hers as she began to tear at her dress in agony. “He promised me, he swore my baby will receive her crown, she’ll be the Princess, he promised! It doesn’t matter that he’s going to marry _her_, my baby is his heir! She’ll be glorious, you’ll see!”

The woman fell into his arms, weeping openly and brokenly, their knees meeting on the gravel-scattered ground, and the shards of destiny settled into place around the King’s heart.

He knew the price, now, and he would not betray his realm’s demands….

He held Thesmophoria until her sobbing eased to sniffles once more, and then he pushed her gently from his chest until he could meet her gaze. She stared, rapt, into his eyes: a mouse under the thrall of the cobra, and he let the power fill him as his realm sought its completion in this godling’s unborn progeny.

“Thessy, this is my price. Forget the cells. I’ll figure something out. They wouldn’t listen to you anyway. But this…. This is yours, and yours alone to give. This is my price. I will save the man you love. I will save all of them, for you. This is what you want, is it not?”

She nodded, not sensing the trap. He could not have stopped now; so close, and all would be as it should….

“Thessy, Zeus will never raise your child to be his heir. That honor will go to Hera’s children, the children he has with her. He will never claim your child; he will never protect it.”

“Her!” She smacked his shoulder with the heel of one hand, weak from strain but arrogant and determined that he understand. “Gaia told me, it’s a girl, she swore!”

“Fine, Thessy, but that’s honestly beside the point!” He gave her a short-sudden shake; she had to see, had to obey, had to give him this. The Realm demanded it…. “Zeus won’t protect the girl, and Hera won’t want her as a threat. Hera will come for your daughter, and Zeus won’t stop her from trying to kill your baby. Hera knows, doesn’t she? She knows you’re pregnant….”

_There it is…. Use the fear, make her see, bend her to the truth…._

“Thessy, this is my price. I will save the man you love. I will, but in exchange:

“Give me your daughter to raise. You came here, pregnant. She’s marked, now, Thessy; she belongs here, and I can protect her from Hera’s claws. Give me your daughter, and I promise, she’ll be the Queen she was born to be….”

He watched the fear turn to grief as he spoke, but he wasn’t prepared for the hot and boiling rage that followed as he let his words fade to silence. He thrashed away from the woman as she surged to her feet, a spear made of flame crackling into existence in her right hand.

“Give you my daughter, so you can force her into your bed at the first opportunity?!! What kind of monster has this place turned you into, Aidoneus?!!” She slashed at him with the spear, forcing him to scrabble away across the stone and gravel until he could find space to leap to his feet and circle around her, angling for his shawl by his resting rock. “Not even Kronos would stoop so low as to set eyes on an infant to warm his bed!”

“Thesmophoria, stop! That’s not what I meant!”

“_Lies!_” That feral look was back in the depths of her flashing emerald eyes, and her spear-of-flame flared brighter in a sudden pulse. He blinked as rapidly as he dared, striving to maintain some vision but wincing from the painful spikes of light into his altered eyes. “Always lies, from all of you, every one of you and your brothers, never the truth-”

“Thessy, stop!” She fell silent, glaring deadly still but silent. “Thessy, I only meant I’d raise her as my own daughter, and she’d rule beside me when she grew to adulthood! I only meant I’d ensure her birthright fulfilled! I would never be so monstrous, please believe me! I only want to give the child what she’s owed, what she’s destined for!”

The flame-spear flickered, and he saw the uncertainty in emerald eyes. He bent, carefully, keeping his eyes on the broken woman as he clasped his coronet from its place atop his shawl by his resting rock. The obsidian and iron were as warm as if they were fresh-forged-and-quenched still, and he could not help but sigh as the weight settled around his brow, overshadowing the swollen leather band holding back his hair.

The coronet carried power of its own, and somehow, he knew everything would turn out a-right as the Realm sang in the gathering darkness through his bond to its existence.

“Thesmophoria, by my power as the King of this Underworld Realm, by my station as the Ruler of all Kthonia, I pledge you all I am in ending this war, if you but agree to deliver to me your child for protection and care in this Realm, hers now as much as mine by your own doing. Swear this to me, and I promise the war will be ended by the dawn above….”

He held his breath as ice coated his limbs with his power’s reaching grasp.

She had to agree, she had to….

She met his gaze, and the glassy green of her eyes had turned to solid jade. Her voice was iron, and his heart leapt at the power held within the promise.

“I accept your price; you shall have my daughter.”

The power of his realm’s fate thundered once through reality, an unechoing drumbeat call of destiny bound and sealed, and Aidoneus moved slowly to the woman’s side as her spear of flame faded with smoky wisps of magic. His hand molded hesitantly around her lower back, and she did not resist when he began to guide her down the path, away from the promontory where she’d sold her daughter to save a man who did not love her in return….

He guided her with only the gentlest touches, uncertain how much contact was permitted, but unable to break it off.

His destiny was cradled within this woman’s flesh, and he would see her safely above before he prepared for war….


	3. The Bartender's Words

I looked up from the blank bottom half of the page, my eyes struggling to focus on the burgundy vinyl of the booth-back across from me. The story swirled in my mind, the images Ray’s writing conjured dancing around the other versions of the Hades and Persephone myths I’d read through the years.

Some more recent.

Others more lore-bound.

And none – _none_ – of them seemed as certain and honest as this one….

“How’s it going, Silas?”

I looked to my right, my head tilting back at a glacier’s pace to allow me to meet Ray’s eyes. I knew my face had to be as dumbstruck as my brain felt, but….

I couldn’t shift it.

I couldn’t shift this feeling that something was happening here, something I could not ignore and would never be able to describe….

Ray smirked, sliding into the booth opposite me, his hands folding around his biceps as he leaned on crossed arms to the tabletop. His eyes crinkled again, and was it just my imagination, or were there fewer of them tonight? I finally managed a breath that seemed far too difficult to work through.

“I…. You have a powerful voice….”

“Well, I think the story is the culprit there. It’s a powerful tale. Where have you got to?”

“Just the first chapter. Just done with it.”

“Oh, Silas. You haven’t even got to the good shit yet….” His smirk widened, and I felt like a canary before a lynx.

And then I realized….

“Ray…? I never gave you my name….”

“No, but I snooped. I looked you up online.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry. Should I not have?”

I considered him for a moment, puppy eyes and quirked-down mouth: he had looked me up online, but he brought me his manuscript in a leather-bound journal filled with natural-seeming calligraphy….

I couldn’t reconcile all of this….

“No, it’s fine. I just…. It threw me. Guess I’m a little weirded out by how real this story feels…. Everything seems suspicious now!”

“Don’t worry about it. So, what do you think of Don? And Thessy…?”

“Well, I like the way you’ve painted Aidoneus. I like how we can tell he’s changing, but that he’s not done changing yet. But I gotta admit: I know Thesmophoria is an older name for Demeter, but I can’t quite figure her out. She is infatuated with Zeus, but she seems far too immature to really be making adult decisions like raising a child, or giving it away. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think she’s a child; but she seems a little…. Immature, that’s the only word.”

“She was. She doesn’t remain so for long….”

“I figured. But, tell me this….”

“I make no promises….”

“Of course you don’t.” I smiled to take the sting away, and he waited patiently with his eyes squinting in the light from the wall-lamp for me to ask my question. “Is Aidoneus in love with Thessy? Is he bargaining for Persephone so he _can_ wed her in place of the one who won’t have him?”

“No.”

“…. Are you sure…?”

Ray laughed, angel-bells and velvet stealing my wits until he wiped his teary eyes and beamed at me, waiting for me to focus on him again after my near-swoon. “Yes, I’m sure, Silas. I wrote the damn thing. The answer is no. That’s it.”

“…. Okay…. ‘Cause, if it is that way…. Look, no one wants another _Twilight_ werewolf-imprints-on-baby-in-utero thing….”

“…. I do not understand anything that you just said.”

“No, I didn’t think you would…. It’s fine. I’m gonna read on.”

“Alright. More scotch?”

I glanced at my glass; I’d barely taken a sip before becoming engrossed in the elegant handwriting and detailed story before my face. “No, I’ll work on that a little more.”

“Alright. Flag me if you need me!” He rocked up out of the booth with a soft groan, and I wondered if maybe he was actually 49, like he’d told me before….

_No matter…._

_Onward into the Realm Below, Silas…._


	4. The King of the Underworld Realm

He approached the mat-hung cavern-mouth, unsure of what exactly he would say, uncertain if he could ask the questions he needed answered in a way that would yield dodge-less and honest responses.

He decided it didn’t matter in the slightest, anyway; he was the King of this Realm, and they would answer him whether they wished to or not.

He yanked the frayed end of the hemp-woven rope on the right of the cave’s egress, the clattering pebbles and wooden toggles beating out a pattering rhythm against the stone high above. A gasping exclamation from beyond the door-mats told him that at least _she_ was here. “Come in, Aidoneus!”

He ducked through the center of the reed-fabric panels and stared at the woman kneading barley dough on a buffed-smooth basalt plinth. Her arms were tan where the flour covered them to her elbows and pale above that; her skin glinted in the torch-flickering dimness of this cave-home, captured starlight shining and winking like a diamond’s facets on every exposed inch. Her eyes were milk-white where color should be around the voids of her pupils, and beyond that a silver-blue that sang of nebulas and novas high above the Upper Realms. Her hair was translucent, mirroring all and hiding nothing where it flowed behind her back and over her shoulders and chest. She wore a simple drape of blacker-than-night fabric, covering her breasts and downward below the work-table’s edges; it was the same she’d worn since he met her eight short months before….

Ten years before….

The simple ring of jet around her neck marked her for who she was, for who she belonged to, for who belonged to her, but _he_ didn’t seem to be here, and so much the better.

Aidoneus still wasn’t sure what he should make of the one called Darkness….

“Nyx, you will answer me true. Why did you and your consort never tell me of the time shift between here and the Realms Above?”

She gave him a sad smile over her continued ministrations to the pillow of dough on the dusted basalt surface. “It would have done no good to tell you. We decided you shouldn’t be burdened with the knowing, when you could not change it, and it would only make you strive far too hard and possibly harm yourself trying to do too much on the mountain….” Her voice was soft, a mother’s tones and compassion lighting the husky shadows hidden in her words.

_They decided…._

_For you…._

“I am no child, Nyx….”

“Nor I, and we do not think you one, though you are young, for true….” She smirked a little, her milk-white eyes crinkling at the corners, and he felt a rage rise high in his chest suddenly, burning in his throat as his power demanded her submission.

As his Realm craved a taste of his power….

“It was not your place to _choose_ to withhold vital knowledge of my realm from me! I am the King here, your King, and-”

“Not mine, young one.” A flash from her eyes drew his attention, a starburst of light that blinded the torches on the walls. “We defy you not, but you do not rule over us. We live here, but you may not count us subject. The Realm is yours. We are not of the Realm. Remember this, for I will not tell you again….” She sounded of iron and monolithic power, then, and his thoughts dissolved under the insistence of his role’s dominant traits surfacing fully for the first time.

_She will bend, or we will break her…._

“I rule here; you will withhold nothing from me in future, or you will regr-”

His back was suddenly against a wall; he wasn’t sure which one, exactly, but that didn’t matter….

All that mattered was the python-thick forearm compressing his throat into his spine, the cold breath against his forehead not doing enough to hide the grazing brush of teeth sharpened to thorny similitude. The torches blazed on; he could hear them crackling, but there was no light in this sudden void of darkness. He saw nothing, though he felt everything the one holding him pinned wanted him to feel.

The raspy voice growled through his ears, pounded through his body in bone-deep vibrations, and echoed in his mind as Erebus defended his consort from the half-voiced threat:

** _“If you wish to live and continue your rule, King of the Realm Below, you will never make such insinuations of harm against my starlight again…. Do you understand me, youngling? Blink once if you do; blink twice if you wish to die now….”_ **

“Erebus, my love, let the boy go. He’s feeling his power, is all; the girl came to him today to call him above to fight. You men, always spoiling for a good brawl; that’s all this was….”

Aidoneus collapsed to the stone floor as the presence released him; his own hand cupped his throat, and he coughed drily between dragging pulls of colder-than-ice air. His tear-streaming eyes found their way to the one standing curled over the star-bright woman; her frame was tiny compared to the hulking presence of her consort.

Mist-smoking black hair; onyx features as hard-cut as if they’d been carved from the mountainside outside this cave-home; ice-blue eyes, deadly in their blank scrutiny; tight-bunched shoulders and enormous pectorals: Erebus, the protector, ready to defend his love with all he was brought to bear….

And Aidoneus knew he wouldn’t win if he pursued his rash defiance. King of the Realm he might be; but no, Nyx was right: He did not rule these Primordial Ones. Their power and existence were outside his control, and he knew that, he did…. He’d just forgotten it in a moment of Realm-thought arrogance….

She was right. He was spoiling for the battle to come, power singing through his veins and humming in his steadily-easing breaths like golden light, and he’d lost control.

He would do better. He had to. A King of a third of the Cosmos Itself could not afford such errors in judgment. He lowered his eyes to the floor once more, taking his hand from his throat as he finally took in a calm, soft and steady lungful of air.

“Nyx, Erebus, I cry your pardon. Your consort is right, Lord of Darkness: I have been called to fight, and my pride is hot-flowing today. I would never harm either of you; the truth is I do not possess that power in the slightest. But I should never have insinuated as much, to begin with. I cry pardon, but I do still need answers regarding this shift….”

A soft breeze rumbled through the cave-house, cold and billowing; when Aidoneus finally looked to the Lady of Night once more, her consort the Lord of Darkness was a few feet shorter, less hulking and muscle-bound though still as dark as his soul-bound power, and rather tamer than the protector that had nearly killed him moments before.

The Primordial One placed a soft kiss to the top of his starry consort’s head and moved around the plinth of jet-dark rock on silent and bare feet to offer his hand to Aidoneus. “I’m sorry, youngling. I…. Things are definitely hot-running Above, and I suppose we’re both a little prideful and rash today. We may not bow to you, but we do respect you; one little slip is not enough to start a new war in this Realm, too.”

Nyx chuckled from behind her mound of pale-tawny dough. “What war? It’s just the three of us for now! It wouldn’t be a war, it’d be a brawl, like I said; but even still, we don’t need it. My love, answer the King’s questions while I get these pitas formed out….”

“More than one question?” Erebus’ head tilted over his left shoulder, his hair drifting a little too slowly to seem natural; Aidoneus gave himself a silent mental shake as he reminded himself that these Primordial Ones _weren’t_ ‘natural’ in the sense of their physical bodies. They may don almost-flesh and nearly-bodies, but it was a shell only; affectation, for their own enjoyment and ease of interaction.

But it didn’t matter; he couldn’t let himself be distracted….

“Yes, I suppose. How does the time shift work? What can I do to track it now that I know it exists? How do I control it or stop it?”

“Oh hell…. Boy, those answers would take a millennium, if I even had them to give….”

“What…?”

“Ummm….” Erebus extended one arm, stiffly, seeming unsure of the motion’s accuracy as he gestured toward a reed-woven mat spread over the stone nearby. Aidoneus moved to take a seat upon it, adjusting the front panels of his robe as he shifted onto his left hip, his knees bent to his right. Erebus, dressed in a power-crafted vest and mid-calf-length pants of shadow and smoke, merely collapsed to the matching mat and crossed his legs before himself, leaning on his elbows on his knees.

“I mean, we don’t know how the shift works. It only is. Always has been. You cannot control it, or stop it, or match it with the Realms Above. And I don’t know how to tell you to track it, because I don’t know how we track it. But if I even knew any of these answers, I’m sure they’d be so ethereally complex and aether-bound to inanity that it would take a thousand years to even attempt to help you to understand them….”

Aidoneus stared, his heart breaking at the thought that he’d never be able to accurately gauge the passage of time in the Realms he’d left behind when he claimed his crown here in the Realm Below.

“Well, we could keep a calendar for you, Aidoneus….” Nyx’s voice was quiet, motherly and sweet once more, and Erebus turned his head to follow his consort’s movements as she came around the work-table of basalt, swiping her hands on a scrap of black fabric and lowering her body into Erebus’ lap. “We could mark down every time we go up to bring the night to the Realms Above, and if there was something you needed us to keep a specific track for, like, a specific day above, we could tell you when it’s coming….”

Erebus smiled brightly, one of his massive hands petting over his consort’s starlight hair. She turned to him, pleased with her solution, and they kissed, passionate and serene; Aidoneus gave them a moment before he quietly cleared his throat, reminding them he was still there.

“That’s all well and good, but how is it even possible that the sun and moon down here don’t follow the patterns Above?! I thought they were mirrors!”

Erebus shrugged, and Nyx giggled as she was jostled by the motion. She answered him, brightness and wonder in her voice. “I don’t know! Our sun and moon are ours alone; they don’t care what happens up there! Ask them if you want those answers, heh-heh!”

They laughed together, and he could only stare at them.

_They are definitely not natural beings…._

_So strange…._

“So, you two have brought the night Above….”

Erebus let his voice rumble through the cave with his answer. “Three thousand, six hundred and nine times over since you arrived here in power eight short Kthonic months ago, Aidoneus.”

The King could only blink for a moment. “But I’ve seen you both, for hours at a time, a couple of times a week for those eight months!”

Nyx shrugged this time, and Erebus folded his midnight arms around her smoke-wrapped torso, his square-sharp chin drifting to rest atop her faceted-shimmering shoulder as she answered him once more. “I don’t know, youngling. Perhaps time slowed down whilst we visited; but my consort has the count right. Near ten years have passed above, and only eight months down here, by the count of our own sun and moon.”

Aidoneus shook his head, feeling lost in a maze of impossibility. But he could argue the point no further: his power told him that the words the Primordial Ones spoke were true in every sense, and besides….

He had to prepare for battle….

* * *

The plains were drenched in gold-shining light, brighter than it should be, baking the clay-and-gravel soil beneath his knees and shins as he stared around the circle of his companions. He held the silence, waiting for the moment when he knew nothing, not even an immediate attack by their enemies, would distract them from his words.

He saw it in their eyes and took the moment for his own.

“Okay. Let’s go over everything again. I have 4 bolt-shafts, one use each. I have my bow, and I have a sword. Pose?”

“My trident.” The black-haired god hefted the shaft of his triple-pronged weapon, keeping it horizontal to the soil so it would not provide a silhouette over their heads, over their earth-tossed embankments that had shielded them for nearly a week. “That’s all I’ve got. You _know_ that, brother….”

Tight black ringlet curls shivered over that over-tanned neck as Zeus silenced his insolent brother with a vicious, lip-curled glance. Poseidon’s eyes shifted from stormy-defiance grey to wary ocean-sky blue, and Zeus knew he wouldn’t speak again until called upon.

_Of course, I know that, but you will still answer to me, when and how I demand you do so. I need time to think; there must be some way…._

The ruddy-cheeked goddess beside Poseidon lifted her shield from her lap: the thing was large, but so was the woman who wielded it. Bronze spikes circumscribed the beveled edges of the thing, scuffed and dinged where the goddess had turned her defense to a weapon when the rest of her stash failed her. “Just my shield, Zeus, but you know it will be effective….” She smiled, her grass-green eyes striking against her flushed, apple-plump cheeks; her hands would not have been misplaced on a butcher’s arms, and her ash-blonde hair was sweat-slicked along her high-riding forehead.

Overall, Hestia could not have been more different from the golden-haired, elegant, whipcord-strong woman at her side.

Hera raised the multi-slotted sheath from her hip, letting it sway back into place as her slender fingers released it to rest once more along her side. “My daggers: six of them, and all ready for blood. But Zeus….”

He silenced her, too, nearly growling across the short distance separating them; she wasn’t his Queen yet, and she should know better than to question him before the others!

“We’ve not lost yet. We will _not_ lose: not today, not ever. This is our destiny, our Cosmos-granted right, and we _will_ _not_ _fail_….” He put every ounce of haughty pride and ichor-bound arrogance that he could into the words; their subtly-straightening shoulders and lifted chins told him they were with him still, to the end.

Poseidon shifted a little on the too-warm soil, scratching at a barely-scabbed scrape on his knee like a child. “What of the ones who stand with us, Zeus? We’ve not heard from them in days….”

“If they have betrayed us, they will regret it with their every breath for all eternity….”

The silence that fell over their huddled encampment then was heavy with unspoken fear. After all, the few Titans that had openly pledged their loyalty to the one who would throw down their kith and kin were still, and ever would remain, Titans. The chance that it had only ever been lip-service until a better option came along was always present in their minds, but Zeus could not afford to let his comrades worry about that now. Not when they still had to find a way out of this fox’s den of a slow-baked death….

Which reminded him that he’d need to put some kind of leash on that idiot Helios when this was all over: stupid, arrogant, too-bright Titan….

A shudder ran through the earth behind them, away from their cast-soil protective wall. Zeus and the other three all turned, hands hovering over weapons, uncertain whether this be trick or friend or foe. The dirt seemed to boil for a slow moment, and then it parted like water breaking over a surfacing log or….

Being….

“Thesmophoria, what in the Cosmos are you doing?!” Zeus lunged to catch the panting goddess, but he held her at arm’s length; she was covered in soil and sweat, after all, and rather smelled….

“Zeus, it’ll be okay….” Her head drooped forward for a moment as she struggled to catch her breath. “I…. I went Below, and he’ll come; he’s on his way, soon!”

Thunder without a lightning burst crashed over the plain as Zeus lost control. He shook the filthy creature by her shoulders, his face right in front of hers to force her gaze to his.

“You. Little. Bitch…. I don’t need his help, and if I even did, I wouldn’t want some dirt-munching little whelp-carrier like you representing my interests!”

He flung the goddess from him, reaching for one of his four bolt-shafts without looking. A clatter of metal against his leather gauntlet knocked his hand away, and he turned to snarl and glare at Poseidon’s stone-carved expression.

“Brother, you cannot waste some of the only offensive means we have at this point on a personal vendetta. Please, let her go, and let it rest, for now.”

Thunder rolled again, louder, more violent, and Zeus felt his hair lifting in the suddenly-charged air around their hide. “Do. Not. Presume. To-”

Distant cries rose on the still air from farther down the gently-sloping plains; the Titans that had staked out that far vantage were small to Zeus’ sight, though he knew they towered high with Khaos-given Power. Dust was rising in a plume in the center of the milling horde, and a speck, glinting like a fallen star, crowned the still-growing mountain of dust.

Zeus ripped his eyes from the disturbance in their enemy’s camp, but there was no sign of the goddess he’d cast aside. Hera met his gaze as he turned back to study the goings-on across the baked earth and parched grasses, her lip curled in a defiant glare that could only mean “good riddance.”

And he had to agree with his future Queen….

Some girls were more trouble than they were worth….

* * *

She scrambled around a jutting stone, some jagged edge or other scraping along her forearm as she stumbled and clawed for purchase on the ever-steepening mountainside. She panted, sliding to the ground, clutching her free hand over the stinging wound the rock’s talons had dealt her, and tucked her knees to her chest. Her stomach heaved, but nothing came up, and a sudden burst of panic for her unborn daughter racked her as she realized – all at once – just how many mistakes she’d made….

A soft voice, similar to her own and yet so very different, whispered into her mind; the panic broke apart as the whisper’s spell melted through her fear with a mother’s gentle calm.

_Little earth-fire one, you must leave this place…._

Thesmophoria resisted the urge to answer the voice aloud; the screams and rumbling sounds of immortals pitching battle across the plain would mask it, but she knew she didn’t need to speak with her mouth for this mothering presence to hear her. She _thought_ her words into space, into the aether, into nothing: “I must stay; I must see how things turn out, and Zeus, he didn’t mean it…. He’ll take care of me, and then Don won’t be able to take our baby away….”

_Zeus will not care for you when this is done, little one. He cares only for his victory, his crown, and once he has them, he will not stop his Queen, the golden-haired beauty, from hunting you down._

“No…. It’s not true, it won’t be that way!”

_It is true, and it will. I can help you. I can hide you. Neither Hera, nor the one who rules Below will find you, if you listen to me now, if you do as I instruct you. I can help you to leave this place, and I can protect you…._

“…. No…. I should stay, to thank Don…. Khaos knows Zeus won’t thank him, not with how he seemed so mad that I went to Don….”

_You do not want to see the one who rules Below, believe me. If you see what you’ve unleashed, you’ll never forgive yourself…._

“What…?”

_He is not like you anymore; he is something dread and terrible, and you will do better to leave without ever seeing him on this bloody ground…._

“No…. No! He’s not a monster! He’s good, he’s kind, he’s always been the best of them!”

_Then why do they scream…?_

Thesmophoria felt the presence watching her within her mind, but she could not subdue her curiosity. She leaned around the rock, turning on her hip in the too-hot-too-dry-dead-grating soil, her eyes unerringly locking on the battle that was steadily moving toward the mountain, toward Orthrys, across the sun-scorched plain.

Although it couldn’t truly be called a battle: it was a rout….

A plume of dust and gravel and flakes of flintrock rose behind the racing crowd of Titans; bursts of pure energy and more-targeted spell-work light-trails arced into the plume from the fleeing ancient ones, random and poorly aimed. The plume moved like the tail of a djinn, like the body of a prey-locked cobra, and at the head of the thing:

Aidoneus, covered from collar to knees in iron oiled and buffed to starlight-shimmering shine, with a cloak of beaten chromium spanning the air behind him like the wings of a comet’s trail, as he _stood on air_, his hands held at his hips in upturned claws of power. He bore no weapon, he carried no shield, but somehow, he had broken the will of these ancient powers; somehow, they fled from her childhood friend, from the one to whom she’d always turned for reassurance and care when all of them were trapped within their father’s innards.

She focused harder, intent on denying her rising fear; he could not have so changed, she would not believe it!

A smile, vicious and wolf-like, took over his features, and she flinched at the savage power that blasted from him with that sudden shift in expression, visible even over the leagues to her Khaos-given senses. A pit, a great chasm, opened before one of the fleeing Titans: Perses, she knew him by his bone-white hair and ragged voice as he fell into the pit. The earth sealed over the now-trapped Titan, and the rest scrambled faster, more frantically, to put more distance between them and the still-advancing plume of dust and stone that held up the bringer of their destruction.

And Aidoneus only smiled more widely at their fear….

“No….” It was little more than a breath, but Thesmophoria could not stay silent.

_I told you, little earth-fire…. **That** is the one to whom you sold your daughter…._

“No, I- I- I didn’t know!”

_I can still help you, protect you and your little unborn one, but you must go, now. Do not linger here. Run, flee around the mountain. Once you reach the other side, I will guide you to a safe place, and then we will begin making plans to protect your child from the King Below. _

“Okay, yes, I’m going!” And she did: she ran, barely keeping from falling more times than she cared to remember. She ran until the bulk of the mountain separated her from the still-too-loud sounds of Titans being swallowed up in the earth by the one she herself had called Above to bind them.

She ran, though tears and fears choked the very breath from her lungs until she thought she would die as the young mortals were rumored to be able to do.

And as she ran, the motherly voice inside her guided her, pointing her to landmarks and hidden paths as the wilderness swallowed her whole….

_You’ll be safe with me, little earth-fire. You, and the little one you carry. Come now; just a little further, and you can rest. There’s a cool spring just through these trees; you’re nearly there…._

Thessy trusted the whisper in her mind.

There was no one else she could trust….

They were all monsters, after all….

* * *

The air smelled of baked earth and Titan-fear, and to him, it was a delight. The brightness of the calmly-watching sun-lord above hurt his eyes, the exposed pale-glinting skin of his arms and legs, the back of his neck, but all of it not nearly so much as if he’d been Below for longer than the eight Kthonic months he’d experienced.

He realized, in a darksome flash of intuition, that everything had worked out as it needed to; as insulting and irritating as the time-shift was, it had made him into exactly the god, King, Being, he needed to be in this very moment. The earth sang to him, the metals and traces of minerals calling out to the one claimed by their most ancient source-flows, and he turned the very soil against the ones who’d sought to rule over it all in terror and bloody violence.

And he smiled as the Titans’ fear rode high and far over this wide-flung field of dried-up grasses.

_There; you fell too far behind, Perses…._

The pit opened where the Titan-lord of droughts and destruction could not avoid it; the wraith-seeming being fell into the crevasse, and The King of the Underworld Realm sealed him up within the pocket of rock. There he would wait, until his cell in the mountain Below was prepared for him. The caverns already completed were destined for others, but all these Titans would be bound, today, forthwith, one way or another.

** _“BOY!!!!!”_ **

Aidoneus stopped his forward progress, pivoting in the air at the top of his column of soil-dust to face the one whose voice still thundered through his nightmares, the one whose choices had led them all here, the one from whom the boy-he-had-been still cowered within his heart in the long nights Below….

Kronos planted his feet in the baked earth’s skin, crouching forward in a fighter’s stance, waist-length black hair lifting in the petty breezes like snakes and vines. His skin was tanned, but where his loin-wrap shifted around his hips, it was obvious he had been pale as milk in a time long past. His eyes were a slate-grey, and Aidoneus could stop the growl that pounded past his teeth as his Realm’s power answered the challenge posed by the Titan-King.

He saw himself in his father’s form, and he ached in his bones to erase the comparisons by violence and wrath.

** _“You’ll not bind me, Boy, not ever! I allow it not! Run back to your hole Below, and we’ll forget this ever happened!”_ **

Aidoneus laughed. He couldn’t help it.

It was hilarious, truly and utterly humorous, that the bastard thought they could forget.

“Old Man, you’ve known this day was coming for you. You’ve known **_I_** was coming for you, all along, and you think I’ll leave now? **_Now?!!_** When you’re finally within my reach?!?!! **_ARE YOU INSANE?!!?_**”

The scars from his imprisonment had faded as his skin paled in his Realm Below, but they twinged now, smarted and stung, as his father finally lunged, breaking into a ground-devouring stride with a snarl on that face so like his own. Aidoneus _reached_ with all he was, with all the power calling out for him, singing from the skin of the earth beneath his body and the Titan-King’s, from the Realm Below in all its pure and ancient power:

A wall of stone shot from the soil before Kronos’ face; the Titan-King slammed into it, and the stone wrapped him close, a lover’s embrace, a child’s prayer for deliverance from the nightmares of the dark. The stone stretched, molded around the massive body, flowing like water to seal around the Titan fully. The earth opened, swallowing up the cast-trapped tyrant, and the plain was still, silent, as Aidoneus turned back to the crowd of wide-eyed ancient ones.

The King of the Underworld Realm smiled once more, and the Titans knelt as one entity to the sun-baked earth, heads bowed in deference to the eldest son of Kronos who had captured, bound, and brought low his own father….


End file.
